Around that time there was a new roommate applicant. A Basque anthropology student who had come to spend three weeks in the city doing his fieldwork. Strangely, neither of the cats—still disturbed by Greta’s overexcitement, I guess—was hostile toward him on the afternoon I had him come by to see the apartment. I figured that three weeks bore no threat to our cohabitation and would bring in extra money in perfect timing with the vacation that was around the corner. And so the next day the Basque moved into the free bedroom. Ander, as he was named, was a boy with a full beard and blue eyes. He was rather shy and didn’t call much attention to himself and spent most of his time studying at the Central Library. During the few hours he spent at home he was polite, helpful even, and from time to time, in our brief conversations, he’d reveal a strange and therefore interesting sense of humor. I remember the night he came home while I was still working and told me he had bought a laughable amount of marijuana for an exorbitant price. In this country, as in so many others, there is the custom of taking advantage of foreigners as much as possible. I felt embarrassed when I heard his account and as recompense offered him two joints I’d had for several months. He cheered up and, extremely appreciative, invited me to smoke on his balcony. Under the effect of cannabis my roommate’s sense of humor emerged uninhibited. After the first three hits he started telling me jokes about the Basques, which cracked me up. We then talked about Mexico and its idiosyncrasies, the apartment, the cats, Greta’s inexorable desire. We exhausted every anecdote, laughing at the poor cat in heat. It was perhaps in her honor that we ended up thrashing about on the mattress I kept for roommates. We had a good time, but it was the only time. In the three weeks of his stay we shared the utilities, groceries, and my stash of weed, but never again a bed.

Rather than suffering because of Ander’s absence, I accepted it placidly and with an unsettling serenity. Greta’s period had ended a few days earlier, and with it the crazed mewing. I finished my thesis by the deadline and turned it in to my advisor for final corrections. I also applied to several graduate programs in history at universities abroad and started planning a vacation I’d spend on some beach on the Pacific coast while waiting for my professional exam. It was around that time I began noticing evident changes in my cat’s body, changes I might have noticed earlier had I not been so busy.